Toshiki Kimura

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Takashi Miike tries to get all the sex out of his system in one fell swoop with Shinjuku Triad Society, the first in a rough series of films called the "Black Society Trilogy" and Miike's first film that wasn't a straight-to-video production.

It ain't easy being a killer. Between the late nights, the wacked-out whores, and the constant pressure from unreasonable bosses, it's enough to drive a guy to drugs. Fortunately, 10 years in the slammer eliminates pretty much all of these problems.

Newly released from a decade in prison, Tachibana (Ryo Ishibashi) is a new man living by an old code. While the jail time has cleared his mind and bloodstream, his conscience still aches from the memory of his past acts. Meanwhile, the world has changed in his absence. The bosses he so faithfully served time for have forgotten the old ways of the yakuza, abandoning their honor in the pursuit of money. Corruption now pervades the crime family to which he has dedicated his life. Drugs now rule the street.

A watershed film in the legacy of Takashi Miike, Fudoh is still one of the director's most disgusting and disturbing endeavors, nearly 10 years after its original release. A classic vengeance story with a twist -- dad kills one of his sons to make good on a betrayal, leaving the other son to exact vengeance on dad and everyone else -- this blood-infused gangster flick leaps from copious scenes of executions (exploding heads, acid baths, you get the drill) to a stripper who shoots darts from her, uh, thingee and a teacher who reveals herself to be a hermaphrodite. Mind boggling in its degree of bad taste, Miike fans will eat it up.